t virtue--civic obedience. They are envied and
admired as shamelessly happy when they had only one great sin--despair.

Mr. Lowes Dickinson, the most pregnant and provocative of recent
writers on this and similar subjects, is far too solid a man to have
fallen into this old error of the mere anarchy of Paganism. In order to
make hay of that Hellenic enthusiasm which has as its ideal mere
appetite and egotism, it is not necessary to know much philosophy, but
merely to know a little Greek. Mr. Lowes Dickinson knows a great deal
of philosophy, and also a great deal of Greek, and his error, if error
he has, is not that of the crude hedonist. But the contrast which he
offers between Christianity and Paganism in the matter of moral
ideals--a contrast which he states very ably in a paper called "How
long halt ye?" which appeared in the Independent Review--does, I think,
contain an error of a deeper kind. According to him, the ideal of
Paganism was not, indeed, a mere frenzy of lust and liberty and
caprice, but was an ideal of full and satisfied humanity. According to
him, the ideal of Christianity was the ideal of asceticism. When I say
that I think this idea wholly wrong as a matter of philosophy and
history, I am not talking for the moment about any ideal Christianity
of my own, or even of any primitive Christianity undefiled by after
events. I am not, like so many modern Christian idealists, basing my
case upon certain things which Christ said. Neither am I, like so many
other Christian idealists, basing my case upon certain things that
Christ forgot to say. I take historic Christianity with all its sins
upon its head; I take it, as I would take Jacobinism, or Mormonism, or
any other mixed or unpleasing human product, and I say that the meaning
of its action was not to be found in asceticism. I say that its point
of departure from Paganism was not asceticism. I say that its point of
difference with the modern world was not asceticism. I say that St.
Simeon Stylites had not his main inspiration in asceticism. I say that
the main Christian impulse cannot be described as asceticism, even in
the ascetics.

Let me set about making the matter clear. There is one broad fact
about the relations of Christianity and Paganism which is so simple
that many will smile at it, but which is so important that all moderns
forget it. The primary fact about Christianity and Paganism is that
one came after the other. Mr. Lowes Dickinso